The choking game has been around for many generations, but it is one of the most frightening games children play.

In the so-called game, adolescents cut off their own oxygen supply by using a belt or a rope, thinking they will release it after a few minutes. However, after a few minutes, it’s too late and you have another teen “suicide” that is not a suicide, but no one knows.

Playing it in any form causes the death of a large number of brain cells. Depriving the brain of oxygen for three minutes causes noticeable brain damage. Four to five minutes without oxygen is fatal.

Parents need to be aware the game is out there and listen to their children. It is most definitely not a game, and failure to act could result in death.

Most parents either don’t know about it or deny its existence for fear that bringing it up will influence their children to try it. Some parents say that their children are too smart to ever do something so “stupid.” The thing those parents fail to remember they too did “stupid” things when they were kids, even though they too were “smart kids.”

Teens and preteens who have no experience with death simply don’t take the concept into account when choosing to play. Death is something that happens to old people or someone else, not to them. This doesn’t make them bad kids, or stupid, or anything in particular. It just makes them young.

Limited research has been conducted on why children are playing the choking game. However, children today are more aware of the dangers of drugs than any generation before, and that doesn’t make them any less susceptible to the thrill-seeking and peer pressures of the adolescents of previous generations.

Many misunderstandings arise among parental groups because the choking game is often associated with erotic asphyxiation, but it has nothing to do with sexual gratification. They are simply seeking the same intoxication level, or high, that many of their parents sought through drugs and alcohol. Like many other thrill-seeking methods, the choking game is uncommon in adulthood.

Parents who have heard of the game think it has to do with sexual gratification, and may even speak with their children about that. But that’s one of the reasons kids get caught up in this. Since sexual gratification is not a part of this “game,” kids aren’t necessarily going to make the connection that both are equally deadly.

Children and teens often succumb to peer pressure, and as parents, we have no way to know when this might happen. When it comes to the choking game, peer pressure can kill. Most parents warn their children about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, but many of those parents aren’t even aware this game exists, so it would never occur to them to warn their children about this type of activity.

As if this “game” is not scary enough, once kids start playing with their friends, they’re more likely to try to play alone, which makes it even more dangerous.

Keep your children safe and make sure they understand how dangerous this “game” can be!